No talk about Chuck Culpepper's masterful NCAA game story?

If I'm sending a writer somewhere, he or she should deliver something I can't get from the wire. Otherwise, what's the point? Not every game merits a big swing like this, but like you say, if a game ever did...

 

The lede was great, agreed. But no concern that story got a major fact of the game wrong?
Anyone who read the story but did not see the game leaves with the wrong idea that not only did Jenkins try and block Paige shot (wrong) but he also hit the game winner (correct)

Has the journalism bar now been set so low that almost correct is ok?

 

It's not black and white. Few things in the world are.

Is there a factual error? Yes.

Did he write that piece in minutes? Yes.

Is it a compelling read? Yes.

I'll add that it's questionable how major a story fact it was that Arcidiacono lunged in vain at Paige's shot rather than Jenkins, but hey, it's an error.

Perfection's great. Appreciation of talent is a virtue, too. If you think that's too low a bar, my best wishes on writing something on deadline which approaches that.

A convenience-store staple. You get to choose.

 

All good now. It's been fixed:

"Then it won even after a frightening jolt, when North Carolina started up the court after Hart’s free throws with 13 seconds left, down 74-71, and Daniel Ochefu lunged at Paige, and Ochefu flew away, and Paige launched his shot."

jr if your finding 7 hour energy you must be near a Sheetz. That's the only place I've ever seen it.

 

We get 24-packs off Anazon. Like Ace said, late afternoon meetings are a bee-otch.

 

Exactly. If Culpepper had written something like this following a result like UConn over Syracuse the following night, it wouldn't have worked. But the game deserved something more than routine, and Culpepper delivered.

 

No one said it should be routine. But those first 2-3 grafs are way overcooked.

 

I'm just here to say I'm thoroughly enjoying the shop talk. Carry on.

 

Of course you have every right to think that. A couple of the sentences were a little much for me, too. But any time you take a risk like that, you're sort of changing the response dynamic to your story. A middle-of-the-road, wire-style piece, some vast majority of your readers are going to think, "That was fine" and then forget they read it a few minutes later. A big swing, some will hate it, but some will love it—will call it a masterpiece—and will discuss it on message boards. It's a U-curve rather than a parabola. So you get the discussion that we have here. When was the last time you remember people talking about a gamer? Again, you'd look like an idiot if you wrote this way about a middling high-school volleyball game, but a Big Game that's also a Great Game? Fucking go for it, I say. I imagine Chuck's bosses are happy he did, too.

 

Also, I find it impossible to divorce my reading of something from the circumstances of its having been written. One of the marvels of "Death of a Race Horse" is that it was written on a typewriter in the rain. That Chuck turned this around in 15 minutes, after a game decided in the final seconds, in a lunatic asylum of an arena—all the more amazing.